The most basic questions [in criticism] have to do with what in conventional literature would be called character and setting. But Beckett's reduction has robbed us of the use of these terms; at best we can speak only of the person or persons described in the pieces and the various places occupied. Who are the persons and where are the places?… [The Beckettian hero] is Everyman on his way from womb to tomb, traveling a journey not of his own choosing, but one thrust upon him by some obscure bungler who seems to be in charge of things…. [Each] is man suffering the absurdity of being forced to live on the planet Earth.

That the particular area of suffering is the hero's mind is suggested by a correspondence between some of the places occupied and the imagined interior of the human skull. But this correspondence is not needed...